To Philip Roth, for His Eightieth

I call the woman teeny only because I need the rhyme.The shock of naked looks huge on top of a desktop and the slime.Duce! Duce! Duce! is what girls get wet with.This one’s perhaps the wettest one’s ever met with.

Mussolini often did this,Boots on, on the desk he worked at.I’m sitting in my desk chair staring at IT and Oh she likes that.She likes me staring at her box office.

Isn’t everything theatre? That’s what’s real.I’ve got the face of an anteaterThat sticks out like a penis to eat a meal.I’m a chinless, cheater, wife-beater attending the theatre.

It has to be someone else’s wife.Of course!I live alone with my life.One divorce for me was enough divorce.

I think of the late Joe Fox and his notionThat he couldn’t sleep without a woman in his bed.He also loved the oceanAnd published Philip Roth when filthy Philip first got read.

When pre-spring March snow soft-focuses the city,And the trees express their branches like lungs showing off their bronchi,And the lined-up carriage horses stomp their hooves and whiten patiently,I stay chained to my desk, honky honking honky.

Letters

I’m a prose guyNever liked poetry, too circuitousThen you sucked me in with Charles Simic’s elegant proseTurns out he’s a poet laureate, who knew?Bought his book of poetryIsn’t that the point?Now you throw Frederick Seidel at mePut him in right after Fantin-LatourHow could I miss him?Philip Roth and Mussolini and fuckingNot to mention Kennedy and Nixon and state murderWho are these guys?I’m 67 years oldLive in the forests of Northern MichiganNice to meet somebody newThank you